


Beneath the Wheel

by LambentLaments



Category: Skullgirls
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 18:31:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20012896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LambentLaments/pseuds/LambentLaments
Summary: Filia’s wish comes true; Painwheel has her life back. Painwheel, not Carol.In which Carol is back, but not really. Her life is interrupted by fits of rage, unexplained dreams and strange attractions. It must be puberty. (Painwheel returns home sans her modifications and memories. The scars are still there, as per canon.)





	Beneath the Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to post something written a long time ago. Thus not compliant with Skullgirls Mobile's origin stories.

“Mom?” she calls from her room. There is no answer, and she calls again, louder, yet not so much that it sounds as a yell or a scream. She does not yell anymore. Her voice, sandpaper rough, is too strange for her, as it has been for the past two weeks.

From across the hallway, “Yes, sweetheart?”

Carol is sated. She does not answer back. She doesn’t know why she does this. This is her house, she should be comfortable in it, and yet there is something foreign about the hallways and empty rooms, especially at this time of the day when shadows creep through the open doorway in her room.

She inspects her drawing. Working on it is all she’s been doing since yesterday, when she got released from the hospital. She’s tried reading but the painkillers render her unable to concentrate. Looking at letters beget her a constant throbbing behind her eyes that only subsides when she hits her head repeatedly.

Understandingly, the sound scared her mom, and Carol is banned from any ‘exerting activity’ whatsoever. Too many things seem to scare her mother nowadays. Carol walking, talking too much, television, anyone that came to the door, Carol screaming in her sleep…

Of course, Carol isn’t one to talk when it comes to being scared by nonsensical things. Or else it wouldn’t have taken two full weeks for her to get discharged.

Her thoughts freeze at the memory, and she forcibly turns her gaze back towards her painting. It’s one of a grassy field, framed by New Meridian’s higher buildings. All there is left to finish is the sky. After a second’s hesitation she decides on a sunset. She spools carmine paint on her palette, then washes her brush clean. Soaks her brush with plenty of water, adds only a smidgen of paint for her to gradient with yellow later. A streak of red crosses the horizon. Then again, then again, then again.

There’s too much red in her painting now, but she can’t stop it anymore. Her hand, seemingly on its own, crosses the field, the buildings and the little white dog she liked so much as she was outlining. She only stops as the paper tears.

She sits there, disoriented, hands trying to wipe away tears in her face. But she feels no wetness on her face.

“Mom?” she says, but it’s less louder this time. She must not hear it.

The mirror in the bathroom shows someone with red on her eyelids and the rest of her face. Carol avoids looking at the mirror even as she washes.

It was nothing, really, the doctors said she was under a lot of stress. And all the meds were probably messing with her head. She’ll be fine soon enough. Her memories from the last few months will come back, her face will heal, and she’ll stop getting angry and upset over the strangest little things. In the meanwhile, all she had to do was take another stabilizer.

“Mom?”

Again, no answer. After a small excursion, she finds her mom in the kitchen. In the short while it took to find her, Carol’s mind has changed. Asking for the stabilizer will only make her mother fret even more. Plus, she would tell dad, and he’d ask more questions.

“Sweetie, there you are.” Her mother smiles, a little too much, so that she looks more strained than comforting. “Want to help me lay out the silverware?”

The cook usually handled these things. But there is no cook in sight, only a new maid working the stove, who dips hurriedly at the sight of her. Things must have changed during the months Carol was missing. Carol has a terrible moment in which she is forced to doubt her far off memory, and for a second she titters, because without her recent memories, the past is all she has to live off of.

Three forks. She can smell soup being warmed, so three spoons as well. Finally, the knives. It takes her a little while to find the knives. They’re covered with a white napkin, and when she uncovers the fabric, the silverware sparkle under the electronic lights with Carol’s every movement. And with each sparkle her heart beats as well. Each beat growing louder than the last, mounting, more like the electronic beat of a large, incomprehensible machine than anything organic, and soon it would grow bigger than her ribcage, ready to burst out of Carol…

“Honey?”

“Yes, mom?” Carol smiles. Her face hurts when she does, so the smile is stopped halfwayshort. Her mother hovers worriedly, then goes back to wiping the already clean plates. Carol can see why mom is working rather than the cook. She can see the lines on the mother’s face abating somewhat as she settles into repetitive movements.

It’s moments like these that make makes her really see the lost months for as they are. For Carol, her last memory is of coming home after school. But the months are there all right, etched into the air as her mother’s worry.

But better her mother’s concern than her father’s forced façade of stoicism. Carol had hoped he would be better at meeting her eyes now that she is out of the hospital, but no. When her dad comes home and they all sit down for dinner his eyes remain steadfastly remained on the soup. “How was your day, Carol?’ he says nonetheless.

“Good. I was a bit bored, though.”

“Did you read? Watch TV?”

She shakes her head, but of course he can’t see it. “No, it hurt my head. It’ll get better, though,” she says hurriedly when she sees her dad stiffening. “It’s better than it was in the hospital, the headaches.” Which isn’t true per say, but she is on a lot less meds than she was there.

“That’s good, just don’t exert yourself, darling,” her mother says.

“I’m okay, really, except for the headaches. I could start school tomorrow.”

There’s a bit of silence at this, and when she looks up she can see her parents exchanging a look.

“Actually, honey, just tell us whenever you feel better and we’ll have your tutor be here as soon as you want her.”

“A tutor?”

“Yes, we talked about it, and we don’t want you to exert yourself,” Carol is becoming sick of the phrase. “Mrs. Armitage, you know, from my ladies club?” mom says, hand inching up to cover her hand but not quite, since they were too far away. “She had a tutor come in when her younger boy, Nicholas, I think, broke both his legs, remember that, sweetie?”

“Yes, you’ve met him, haven’t you?” dad cuts in.

“Sure, I guess” Carol frowns. “But my legs are fine. I guess if it’s for a short while?”

She sees the two of them exchange another glance.

“Actually, it might be for a little bit longer than that,” mom says, faux cheerful.

“How long?” she says. Her mouth is dry. This time she doesn’t think it’s her meds. She gets no answer. Her parents continue eating, eyes fixated on their bowls. Carol waits, then asks again. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“You ever liked school that much anyway, sweetie. Remember when you pretended to be sick when you were in fifth grade?”

“I had a test that day and Mr. Abercombe hated me, I told you. It’s not… What am I supposed to do all day? What do I tell my friends?”

 _What friends? No one visited her at the hospital,_ a little voice says at the back of her head.

“They can come over for tea sometimes, of course. Later, when you’re better.”

“So I’m not going to school, ever?”

“No, not ever,” her mom says. “Maybe someday, just not… in the close future, maybe.”

“We don’t want you endangering yourself again,” dad says instead.

“Endangering myself?” Carol says, incredulous. “I was what, walking on the street. It was a traffic accident.” She can fill her voice rising. She stops and counts to ten. She hates confrontations. She used to anyway, though right now it almost feels like her blood is welcoming the fight.

She gets no answer. The silence is ominous. “It was a traffic accident,” she says again. Her parents do not meet her eyes, and something in her clicks, a sort of confirmation of a suspicion she did not know she had.

What are you not telling me? she wants to yell. No, not yell, scream. She searches their faces and finds nothing. The anger in her has still not abated. This should feel strange to her, she was never the sort of person to be rude to her parents.

“Please. May I be excused,” she manages to say.

“But you’ve barely eat-“

“Please, I have a headache.” She manages to unclench her fists for the while she walks down the hall, where her parents can see her, but as she climbs up the stairs she feels them clenching again.

When she reaches her room and closes the door behind her, the anger is still boiling. Her legs, however, give out on their own. Her parents were right to a point, she’s still sick. She manages to get up in a minute or two, half crawling, almost animalistic, as if propelled by a force outside herself.

What are they hiding? What don’t I remember?

Anger is good, it’s pure and unforgiving, and drives all other doubts and questions out of her. In her bed, she grasps her linen sheets, until they feel on the breaking point.

Lying on the sheets feel more familiar than anything, she supposes. It’s what’s she’s done for the last two weeks. So is the mountainous, consuming anger that’s boiling inside. This anger, however, feels cleaning to a point, whereas at the hospital…

She screams into her pillow. It’s one of heavy down, and she can barely hear how her voice, already unfamiliar and rough, keeps breaking.

Carol doesn’t get up for breakfast the next morning, though she wakes at the brink of dawn to see the sun hit the top of the suburban houses of her neighborhood. She watches the colors stretch out over the uneven horizon, bleeding out over the crevices between buildings, then lies there until there is nothing to see anymore, only the sounds of people’s humdrum morning rituals to close her eyes to. She tries to remember the dream she had, and comes up with nothing. She hasn’t been able to remember her dreams since her accident.

She is a little hurt that her parents do not check up on her, but later (she thinks it must be around noon) when she opens her door, she finds her breakfast sitting there. She eats on her bed, a rare luxury, and reads the note mom has written for her.

“I hope you feel better today. Love, Always. Mom”

She thinks to save the note in the flower embroidered box she has in her chiffonier. As she finishes her toast however, a drop of jam splatters the last two words, and she reluctantly deposits the note in her trash bin.

Which is just as well, she thinks, a little cruelly. This way her mom might see how she’s thrown away her note, and she’d know how Carol is still angry.

But still, she stiffens a little when mom comes to knock at the door soon after.

“Sweetie, I have a lunch date with Mrs. Armitage today, I thought you should know.”

Carol disliked the pompous woman. She always scrutinized Carol with her large eyes, all the while with a polite smile on. Carol was sure mother only obliged lunch dates from the head of the ladies’ club to make sure she wasn’t let out of the gossips, and to make sure she wasn’t actually ‘the gossip’. Still, it would be good to get out of the house. “Oh, I should get ready, then.”

“You don’t have to, darling. We wouldn’t want you to-“

“Exert myself. I know” Cutting in would have earned her a reprimand, but no, Carol is sick, and therefore exempt from manners. Carol has realized it subconsciously yesterday, and she is perversely pleased to see it confirmed.

“Right. I’ll have the maid send you something up for lunch.”

“It’s just lunch, though. I can go.”

A pause. “Don’t make this harder for me, darling.”

That shouldn’t feel like a slap on her face, but it does. After mom is gone, Carol tries to rationalize. Of course her mother is upset. And yes, the situation must be hard for her as well.

Harder than Carol?

The walls feel tight, the discomfort feeds to her need to get out. Barring the short ride from the hospital to her house, she has not been outdoors.

Tiptoeing, she checks out the premises to confirm that her mother is indeed gone. When she calls out, she is met with silence. She rushes back to her room, and quickly ransacking her wardrobe, she gets dressed. Gloves, a scarf, a hat and thick cardigan, actual thick boots that feel strange on her.

The air that hits her face as soon as she opens the door takes her by surprise. It is cooler than she expected. As she walks, she decides it feels nice on her face, though the wind occasionally makes her shiver and pull her cardigan tighter to her. The air is that of certain November, tangy to each inhale. Leaves crunch under her feet as she walks. There are piles of leaves raked in each house and mansion. She tries to ignore the overwhelming urge to jump in several of the bigger piles.

One such is pile is of such multicolored splendor, she cautiously eyes the large curtained window nearest to it, checking for the house’s inhabitants. Just when she is about to jump, however, a movement draws her eyes back to the window. A maid has come to open the curtains. In the split second the maid sees Carol’s face, her expression is that of unreserved shock.

Carol retreats quickly, pulling her scarf up her face, eyes fixed at the ground. The November air does not feel nearly as inviting anymore. Carol shivers violently for a few seconds. A sudden gush of wind makes her squeeze her eyes. In all her weeks at the hospital, she has never longed to go home as much as she does now.

She’s walking quickly. She is unable to force herself to go back the way she came from, she can feel on her back, the windows of the large mansion-like houses of Maple Crest staring at her. A near physical weight on her back compels her to go forward, past the houses, to the less inhibited parts of the suburban town. She’s nearing the park, and at some point her conscious thoughts compel her to turn rightwards, so that she can take a detour route back home.

To her dismay, she hears a loud raucous coming closer. She has reached the crossroad that bottlenecks from the streets that reach outer town. Her steps halt. This is the route the students from her school take when they are coming home to Maple Crest.

While she is hesitating, the first of the crowd reaches her. She pulls up her scarf, lowers her head and moves to the edge of the sidewalk, trying to look as inconspicuous as she can. Farther ahead, she thinks she can see some of her classmates. For a moment she considers going to talk to them, but she cannot bear the thought of answering their questions and trying to ignore their curious glances, especially when she isn’t sure if she has any credible answer to any of their queries. 

She’s looking steadfastly at her feet, studying each crack in the concrete with each step she takes. But halfway across the street, a strange feeling jostles her, compelling her to look up.

She feels, rather than sees, from across the crowd a presence watching her. Carol looks beyond the students and sees with sudden clarity a lone figure standing at the end of the street. As a child, Carol had one of those picture books that, when looking crossed eyed, presented with you a completely different image that seemed to pop out from the pages, seemingly blurring the random patterns that comprised it. The girl is it, the image she has been looking for without knowing it.

Their eyes meet. The girl’s irises are red, and Carol finds herself unable to look away. Another gaggle of schoolgirls walk past them.

Carol finds she has unthinkingly taken a few steps toward the girl. As soon as she is conscious of the movements, the steps turn into jogs.

“Wait,” she says. But her voice breaks, unable to breach the 30 or 40 yards between them. She has no idea if the girl sees her frantic thoughts, but the girl is smiling. It’s the smile that tells Carol that she’s not mistaken in singling the girl out. Carol knows the girl. If she can slow down her heart beating for one second, if she can stop the blood in her veins practically boiling, she would recall her name, and they would meet halfway. The girl is smiling, not in pity or ridicule, but with pure warmth.

But the second is past as a schoolboy jostles her by mistake as he jokes around with his friends.

“Filia!” Carol calls. But Filia is already gone.

By the time Carol gets home, the sun is nearly set. The door is unlocked when she tries it, and when she closes the door behind her, it closes louder than she expects.

“Carol? Is that you?” Father’s voice shouts down at her from up the stairs, followed by footsteps leading him down.

“I was-“ She is struck silent by the look on her parents’ face. They look absolutely terrified. Terrifed, and livid. Her father has his hands clenched white, and she nearly flinches when he draws near. 

“What were you thinking?” her mother says. Her father opens his mouth to start shouting, but Carol does not want to hear it. “What are you hiding?” Carol asks. She’s shaking, from what she doesn’t know. A strangely familiar heat is coming down on her, disbanding all else. “Why are you so scared? It’s just a scar.”

Carol gives them a second to respond, but they don’t. With a sinking feeling, she voices what she’s feared for the last two weeks. “It’s going to heal in a while?” She sounds almost pleading, and still her parents say nothing. She is shaking near uncontrollably now, and the heat has gotten worse, manifesting as something like a sharp headache at her temples. She rubs at them vigorously.

Her mother touched her forehead tentatively. “You’re burning up!”

_Yes, yes I am. I’m burning. My head-_

“I’m not ever going back to school, am I?”

“Let’s get you to bed dear.”

Hands grabbing her. She hates the hands so much, she flails, her right foot slipping under her as she does. Her father reaches out to hold her as well. Holding her up, away from the door and winds.

That night, she dreams of a single red eye, peering down at her from above. Upon waking, she realizes that is what she has been dreaming of for the last two weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I get to finish this thing.


End file.
